Tectonics of the poietic self : the formation of Juan Larrea and Lorenzo García Vega

This dissertation examines the literary discipleship and poetic formation of Juan Larrea (Spain, 1895-1980) and Lorenzo García Vega (Cuba, 1926-2012) through a multidisciplinary model of poietic tectonics that brings together geological, psychoanalytical, and artistic structures of creation. As writers of complex prose works, Juan Larrea’s cultural hermeneutics and Lorenzo García Vega’s fragmentary testimonies appear to have little in common. However, when their trajectories are placed in parallel, a shared evolutive sequence becomes evident. This study concentrates on the first of a proposed two-cycle transformation process, tracing each poet’s psychic and writerly growth from pre-literary adolescence to the publication of their first works. The four chapters correspond to four tectonic stages in magma production as they occur within the geological subduction zone. The first explores the oceanic plate period that I describe, using Harold Bloom’s terminology, as a framing darkness characterized by national crises, unsatisfactory religious educations, and psychological suffering. Compelled to seek a guide out of these environments, the next chapter considers the period of convergence and subduction between the oceanic and continental plates describing the encounters between Larrea and Vicente Huidobro, and between García Vega and José Lezama Lima, as well as the completion of their literary apprenticeships to these maestros. At a certain point during its descent the oceanic plate releases essential elements that initiate an ascent into a magma chamber, equated with Larrea and García Vega’s respective appearances in the literary magazines Favorables París Poema and Orígenes, and a reconciliation of influence with instinct through psychological individuation. The cycle concludes when the magma reaches at the Earth’s surface, and similarly, the publication of two small books of poetry, Larrea’s Oscuro dominio (1934) and García Vega’s Suite para la espera (1948), signaled the eruption of each poietic self, prepared to continue their growth into the writers that they would later become. The multiple points of contact between the two poets and the methodology for identifying such commonalities provide a unique approach to the formation of the artistic personality and offer dialoguing exegeses between the works of two significant, yet understudied authors.